• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.667-676
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• 2009

The payload can be classified as a passive and active type. Generally radar satellite to acquire specific information through various radar images will use the SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) as active type payload. the principal of SAR satellite is to receive the signal returned from certain objects and/or surfaces in order to construct an radar image. The data acquired from the satellite in its real orbit shall be needed to perform successful CAL/VAL (Calibration & Validation) because the SAR satellite have to receive the returned signal for SAR image construction. In order to do the above, the returned signal shall be related to ground targets. Especially ground target is the corner reflector (CR) for CAL/VAL. Generally the reflector has various types and shapes. Their selection can be dependent on characteristics and mission objectives of SAR satellite. In this paper, reflector focused on the optimal case and effective case has been studied and then the trihedral corner reflector under this study has been designed and its performance also analyzed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.43 no.7
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• pp.648-656
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• 2015

Active SAR satellite's main maneuver is roll axis maneuver to change SAR antenna direction. In addition, yaw steering is required to minimize the doppler centroid variation. Thus, it is resonable to assign the torque/momentum capacity mostly to roll axis and then yaw axis. In this case, the pitch axis shows low agility performance. However, due to orbit maintenance, large angle maneuver about pitch axis is sometimes required. In this paper, we study the pitch axis maneuver time reduction through sequential rotation about roll and yaw axis. Since these two axes have high agility performance than pitch axis, maneuver time reduction is possible when large angle rotation about pitch axis is required.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.23 no.10
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• pp.1204-1211
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• 2012

Measurement and analysis results of the extracted radiation-patterns from the field-experiments which were conducted to acquire the generic technology for calibration and validation of the satellite SAR system(Synthetic Aperture Radar) are presented in this study. Prototype of active transponder is adjustable within maximum 63.1 dBsm of RCS (Radar Cross Section) and includes the receiving-function with external receiver. To increase an accuracy of these field experiments, we repetitively measured satellite SAR systems of the same operating mode(i.e., COSMO-SkyMed No. 2 & 3, hh-pol., strip-map himage mode, 3 m resolution). Then, the reliability of experimental results was cross-checked through analysis of the RCS of active transponder on SAR image. The property of azimuth radiation patterns of satellite SAR system extracted from them has $0.352^{\circ}$ of HPBW(half-power beamwidth), $0.691^{\circ}$ of FNBW(first-null beamwidth), and 11.17 dB of PSLR(peak to side lobe ratio), respectively.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.44 no.9
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• pp.806-813
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• 2016

For satellite attitude control and maneuver, normally four reaction wheels are used through pyramid configuration. However, if satellite's moment of inertia is large or available reaction wheels' capability is small, we can consider using five reaction wheels. In this case, we should think the arrangement of wheels and their operation method. Active SAR satellite requires high agile maneuver about roll axis to achieve looking angle change. In this research, we study the operation method of five reaction wheels configuration for fast roll maneuver.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
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• v.24 no.12
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• pp.1128-1139
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• 2013

KOMPSAT-5(KOrea Multi-Purpose SATellite-5) has a benefit of continuously conducting its mission in all weather and even night by loading SAR(Synthetic Aperture Radar) payload, which is different from optical sensor of KOMPSAT-2 satellite. During IOT(In-Orbit Test) periods, SAR image calibration should be conducted through ground target of which location and RCS is pre-determined. Differently from the conventional corner reflector, active transponder has a capability to change its internal transfer gain and delay, which allows active transponder to be shown in a pixel of SAR image with very high radiance and virtual location. In this paper, the development of active transponder is presented from design to I&T(Integration and Test).

• The Journal of The Korea Institute of Intelligent Transport Systems
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.72-78
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• 2021

This paper proposes a wide-band dual-polarization stacked patch array antenna for satellite SAR system applications. The array antenna was designed for loss minimization and wide-band characteristics to enhance the performance of the SAR system and optimize it for active return loss in applications to active phased arrays. The fabricated array antenna showed a performance of 19.26%/19.79% fractional bandwidth within the -10 dB reference level of the active return loss and showed loss characteristics of 0.797 dB/0.799 dB averaged within the operational frequency for both H/V-polarization cases. The pattern performance was verified by comparing the measured patterns with the calculated patterns obtained by the array factor.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Geographic Information Studies
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.41-54
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• 2021

It is very essential to estimate the water body area using remote exploration for water resource management, analysis and prediction of water disaster damage. Hydrophysical detection using satellites has been mainly performed on large satellites equipped with optical and SAR sensors. However, due to the long repeat cycle, there is a limitation that timely utilization is impossible in the event of a disaster/disaster. With the recent active development of Micro satellites, it has served as an opportunity to overcome the limitations of time resolution centered on existing large satellites. The Micro satellites currently in active operation are ICEYE in Finland and Capella satellites in the United States, and are operated in the form of clusters for earth observation purposes. Due to clustering operation, it has a short revisit cycle and high resolution and has the advantage of being able to observe regardless of weather or day and night with the SAR sensor mounted. In this study, the operation status and characteristics of micro satellites were described, and the water area estimation technology optimized for micro SAR satellite images was applied to the Daecheong Dam basin on the Korean Peninsula. In addition, accuracy verification was performed based on the reference value of the water generated from the optical satellite Sentinel-2 satellite as a reference. In the case of the Capella satellite, the smallest difference in area was shown, and it was confirmed that all three images showed high correlation. Through the results of this study, it was confirmed that despite the low NESZ of Micro satellites, it is possible to estimate the water area, and it is believed that the limitations of water resource/water disaster monitoring using existing large SAR satellites can be overcome.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.357-372
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• 2016

Augustine volcano, located along the Aleutian Arc, is one of the most active volcanoes in Alaska and nearby islands, with seven eruptions occurring between 1812 and 2006. This study monitored the surface displacement before and after the most recent 2006 eruption. For analysis, we conducted a time-series analysis on data observed at the permanent GPS(Global Positioning System) observation stations in Augustine Island between 2005 and 2011. According to the surface displacement analysis results based on GPS data, the movement of the surface inflation at the average speed of 2.3 cm/year three months prior to the eruption has been clearly observed, with the post-eruption surface deflation at the speed of 1.6 cm/year. To compare surface displacements measurement by GPS observation, ENVISAT(Environmental satellite) radar satellite data were collected between 2003 and 2010 and processed the SBAS(Small Baseline Subset) method, one of the time-series analysis techniques using multiple InSAR(Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) data sets. This result represents 0.97 correlation value between GPS and InSAR time-series surface displacements. This research has been completed precise surface deformation using GPS and time-series InSAR methods for a detection of precursor symptom on Augustine volcano.

• Journal of Cadastre & Land InformatiX
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.79-90
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• 2017

Urban environment represent one of the most dynamic regions on earth. As in other countries, forests, green areas, agricultural lands are rapidly changing into residential or industrial areas in South Korea. Monitoring such rapid changes in land use requires rapid data acquisition, and satellite imagery can be an effective method to this demand. In general, SAR(Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellites acquire images with an active system, so the brightness of the image is determined by the surface roughness. Therefore, the water areas appears dark due to low reflection intensity, In the residential area where the artificial structures are distributed, the brightness value is higher than other areas due to the strong reflection intensity. If we use these characteristics of SAR images, settlement areas can be extracted efficiently. In this study, extraction of settlement areas was performed using TerraSAR-X of German high-resolution X-band SAR satellite and KOMPSAT-5 of South Korea, and object-oriented image classification method using the image segmentation technique is applied for extraction. In addition, to improve the accuracy of image segmentation, the speckle divergence was first calculated to adjust the reflection intensity of settlement areas. In order to evaluate the accuracy of the two satellite images, settlement areas are classified by applying a pixel-based K-means image classification method. As a result, in the case of TerraSAR-X, the accuracy of the object-oriented image classification technique was 88.5%, that of the pixel-based image classification was 75.9%, and that of KOMPSAT-5 was 87.3% and 74.4%, respectively.

• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.6_1
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• pp.1185-1193
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• 2023

The increasing interest in soil moisture data from satellite imagery for applications in hydrology, meteorology, and agriculture has led to the development of methods to produce variable-resolution soil moisture maps. Research on accurate soil moisture estimation using satellite imagery is essential for remote sensing applications. The purpose of this study is to generate a soil moisture estimation map for a test area using KOMPSAT-3/3A and KOMPSAT-5 SAR imagery and to quantitatively compare the results with soil moisture data from the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission provided by NASA, with a focus on accuracy validation. In addition, the Korean Environmental Geographic Information Service (EGIS) land cover map was used to determine soil moisture, especially in agricultural and forested regions. The selected test area for this study is the western part of Jeju, South Korea, where input data were available for the soil moisture estimation algorithm based on the Water Cloud Model (WCM). Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery from KOMPSAT-5 HV and Sentinel-1 VV were used for soil moisture estimation, while vegetation indices were calculated from the surface reflectance of KOMPSAT-3 imagery. Comparison of the derived soil moisture results with SMAP (L-3) and SMAP (L-4) data by differencing showed a mean difference of 4.13±3.60 p% and 14.24±2.10 p%, respectively, indicating a level of agreement. This research suggests the potential for producing highly accurate and precise soil moisture maps using future South Korean satellite imagery and publicly available data sources, as demonstrated in this study.